Son of Suns
by Womgi
Summary: There was a boy, who had become a man. Eventually, he was a boy again. He is a strange boy. But perhaps that is for the better. Reincarnation.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The represented franchises are not owned by me. Please support the official material if you can.

Warning: Unbetaed

XXX

 _Once upon a time in the stars above, there was a boy._

 _When he was young, he met an angel who fell from the sky._

 _To let the Angel return to the stars, the boy risked his life in a trial no human could complete, and won._

 _For his bravery, he was taken with the Angel, to the stars where the Gods roamed._

XXX

Naruto Uzumaki is a quiet child. He doesn't squirm or cry, he rarely makes demands, and he is, often simply there, like furniture, seen and forgotten. Even his fellow children ignore him.

The Matron at the orphanage however, knows that Naruto and a certain demon were invariably linked together. And ever since that fateful day, not too many years ago, she carries with her a burning hatred of the thing which has ruined her life, the Nine Tailed Fox, _Kyuubi no Kitsune._

It was a gloriously unstoppable beast. For the few minutes where the Yondaime Hokage had not reached the battlefield, it had cut a swath through Konoha's shinobi. Young or old, Chunin or Jonin, it mattered not. Many were taken that day. None could say they had not known any of the dead. And finally, it was defeated, taking the Yondaime's life with it. But Konoha still stood then. And Konoha still stands now.

The matron at the orphanage looks at the creature before her with a barely hidden shudder. She had been a ninja, retired Chunin. Yet she still cannot reconcile that great thing, the unstoppable beast with what she was seeing. It was a small child, of 4 years old. Yet, there is something quite not right about the boy. Something just quite so…different.

It's the sadness she thinks. For the avatar of that massive engine of destruction, the boy behaves remarkably calmly and sadly. There is none of the anger at the other children's actions. They boy is like a rock that stands firm in the sea, against wind and water. He is, she decides, unnatural.

XXX

The days after that one unnamed day, are not particularly memorable for anyone.

When the boy notices that the outright malice of the previous time has disappeared into a strangled bitterness, he does not react. When the Matron starts to act blankly horrified at him, he does not do anything.

Life is a cycle and he was born anew. The only thing he does is to live and train. He has the force. But he also has something else. It is wonderful, to just be a child, free from the chains of his past life, free from the ravages of his past injuries. But mostly, he is grateful to be free to of his master, and free to grieve.

He sometimes whispers in his sleep, names of the past that still hold meaning in his heart.

"Luke…"

"Padme…"

"Obi Wan…"

"Qui gon…"

"Ahsoka…"

"Mom…"

And sometimes, when he is consumed by his past regrets, he whispers another name, one he did not know the significance of, until after he had died.

"Leia…"

He knows that he is not silent in his sleep. The Matron whispers the foreign sounding words sometimes, trying to make sense of a boy she does not, indeed cannot understand. It is fitting, he thinks, that even in a new world, in a new life, he is still disliked, perhaps even hated. He might not enjoy torment, but he is almost too ready to do penance. In this life, he vows, he will not be a monster.

He also wonders sometimes, of when life will test him on that.

XXX

The children of the orphanage do not like Naruto. He is different, and children cannot handle differences. There is a basic human nature at play. All human, indeed, all sentient life organizes themselves into tribes. But this boy, he is not one of the tribe. So he is left alone. They test him, in that infantile manner of children, alternatively reaching out and provoking him. But he does not react like one of the tribe, or even one outside the tribe. He smiles sadly, and gently rebuffs them. Children, are not yet of an age to handle that and soon ignore him altogether. It is something that the Matron is all too willing to tolerate.

The Matron is confused. And she does not react well. Her life was much simpler before the Hokage dropped that blonde haired baby here right after the worst day of her life. She does not know whether to hate him or love him. But the latter is beyond her anyway, so she does not bother. The other children over the years have ostracized the boy. They instinctively seemed to keep away from him. And yet the boy simply smiled. It was ever so unnatural.

XXX

The Sandaime Kokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi sometimes wondered what had happened to the boy.

He came to orphanage, once every few weeks, to all the orphanages. It did his heart well to see the future that they had sacrificed so much of themselves for. The other purpose was of course to inspire the children into being shinobi, future defenders of the Village, and Konoha's soldiers to be. It is something of a dissonant thought, that the same children he loves will one day die for Konoha, perhaps even in missions assigned by his hand. But Hiruzen has been Hokage for a long, long time. He is hardened to life, and to death. He has made his peace,

But what of Naruto, the son of his beloved successor, yet forever placed beyond arm's length?

The delicate politics of the hidden village, balanced on truth and lies, secrets and rumours meant he had no way to take the boy into his own house. It was one of his many, many regrets. But now, he finds he has a new regret.

Naruto, what happened to you?

The boy, is a mystery.

It is not the Kyuubi, of that he is sure. The seal was and is a masterpiece, the strongest Jinchuuriki seal in the elemental countries, a construct that was the pinnacle of Uzumaki sealing arts, and powered by human sacrifice to the Shinigami itself. The Kyuubi might as well not be there.

But yet, the boy is different.

He did not laugh, he did not cry. He simply went through life, sometimes smiling sadly, at thoughts nobody knew. It is, Hiruzen thinks, unnerving to see someone so calm, at so young an age. Sometimes, the boy resembles nothing more than some ancient Fire temple monk , aged and withered, and infinitely wise. To see something like that on someone so young, it is disconcerting to him. Still, Hiruzen tries to be there for the boy, which is more than can be said of Kakashi and Jiraiya. He consoles himself with the thought that he could only do so much. Sometimes, that doesn'treassure him as much.

Naruto once asks about the world and the stars. He wonders why, in a world where men can become unto gods, nobody has gone to the moon and beyond.

And Hiruzen tells a half remembered legend, of the people who came from the stars to the moon and later settled here. He is pleased to see a glint in the boys eye. But then Naruto smiles his first happy smile he has smiled, and Hiruzen Sarutobi feels a few years younger. He feels like more than just the Sandaime Hokage.

And then the moment passes and the boy smile turns sad again. Except, there is a hint of wry amusement, which Hiruzen dismisses from his mind.

Naruto Uzumaki never brings up the stars again. Neither does Hiruzen Sarutobi. It passes on, as moments are wont. But Hiruzen is content. They are closer now, and he feels like Naruto has, in his own way, started to respect him, maybe even become a but happier.

Minato, he thinks, looking to the fourths giant stone head, you would be proud of him.

But Naruto does not forget. And one day, he decides, he too will return to the stars.

A/N:

Just a one shot for now. Have started working again, so I'm afraid my "lack of muse" has been joined by "working" in my list of bad excuses. Still, I do have hopes to continue this one, if irregularly. I've finally made my peace with the fact that "Regular Schedule" and "Womgi's fanfiction" will never go together in a positive manner. I'm a bit resigned to just doing one shots at this rate.

But sometimes, I do get inspired, and sometimes I try to experiment. So while my eternally unpublished Star Wars Harry Potter crossover gets its 4th rewrite after nearly 70k words written in total, I do try to generate something or the other.

The writing on this really is an experiment as I try to give a sense of here and now to it. Since I don't have experience with this style(though I've seen some excellent examples of this), I beg forgiveness for any disappointments. Still, if you have advice about how I can improve, or if you have any other comments, please review. I do appreciate your opinions. Actually, I'm sure almost all writers appreciate feedback. I'll try to reply to all reviews if possible, though I've not been able to do much with my internet for a while


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: See chapter 1.

Special thanks to Senyor Fier Mensheir for his advice!

Xxx

 _There was once a god who was different from other gods._

 _He had a son who he loved and cherished_

 _One day, they faced an evil god in battle._

 _And the evil god killed the god who was different._

 _But the Son killed the evil god in turn._

 _But revenge was empty, and the son was alone, all the same._

Xxx

There are no droids here .

It is something that saddens Naruto.

As a young boy, when the shackles of slavery seemed especially tight, he had worked with droids, working with the little mechanical beings with furious intensity. Watto, that grumpy Toydorian was not all that enthused. At least until he somehow jury rigged that first power converter back to life. In later years, when the chains of slavery were replaced by the confines of black cloying armour, he had been convinced that his only true friends had been those very droids.

But droids are also slaves.

He knew this then. And he knows this now. In many ways, he was a droid also. He followed his instructions so exactly, following his programming, from his first breath under the suns of Tatooine, to that last sigh on the Death Star. How was he anything but a droid? Even now, he was a droid following his own self-inflicted programming , almost in a daze. R2 had managed to be more than that.

R2D2, he sometimes muses, was more free than Sidious at the height of his power, so far beyond any living being in his choices and his existence choosing to live and love in.

Naruto also knows that R2 was with Luke, just as R2 was with Padme and then him. It is comforting in a way, that there was someone to take care of his son in his adventures.

And yet, they are not happy thoughts.

Naruto smiles sadly.

But now, in this world, so full of life, he found himself missing working on 3PO. He wished for a hypospanner, a fusion cutter, anything that would have given him a link to that past.

Regret and nostalgia are not a good combination for Naruto. It draws his mind to morbid thoughts. And his mind reaches to the thoughts that were always just beyond his power to disappear.

Watto, was a far better master than Palpatine ever was. The Jedi, for all their flaws were never really slavers either. In the end, he had been just another deluded fool playing at being a Sith. "I see through the lies of the Jedi!" he had crowed so triumphantly in his rage.

He always was a fool.

Perhaps that is why he is prepared to do his penance alone. Even if Padme would have knocked him in the head and told him to get on with life. Even if she would have laughed lightly and drawn him into a kiss. And he would have chuckled in good humor before listening to her.

But Padme is not here. And he is all too painfully aware of that fact.

His penance is for Padme. And it is for Luke. And it is for everyone else he tortured and murdered and wronged. So he does his best not to hurt anyone at all. He takes solace in the silence, the simple peace of being alone. For once, away from everyone he loves, he finds a quiet peace, tainted by his eternal longing for his own family.

But still, he misses the droids.

That quirky 3P0; the loyal R2; even the hapless battle droids he slaughtered by the thousands. He misses them all.

Naruto smiles sadly.

Xxx

Naruto however, was never one to be idle.

He has found something else to work on.

Chakra is not the force. It is something else. It is similar to the force. It might as well be something of the force. But it is not the force.

The first time Naruto accesses his Chakra, there is a burst of blue light within him that stuns him. He barely keeps conscious. He feels the world around him in an entirely new way. All life is Chakra. All life is force. It is something Naruto will spend long hours meditating on.

When the masked ninja shows up in the vicinity, watching yet waiting, Naruto tilts his head curiously. They remind him of the emperors hands, and his inquisitors. Yet there is something more pure about them. Even in the bloodshed and the rage and emptiness that defines her purpose, she is not tainted by the dark side. This one is not a Sith.

It is fascinating.

It is distressing.

Naruto stretches his senses and discovers that the whole village is filled with these Sith-but-not. They are everywhere. They guard the gates. They patrol the roofs. They are the Hokage that is their military and political leader. They are the proud fathers, and the doting mothers, and the uncaring children and the rebellious teenagers and everyone in between. They are here and they are full of life and love, anger and sorrow, joy and hate. And yet…they are just people in the end. It is wonderful and heart breaking at the same time.

He wonders, in the traitorous part of his mind, if he would have been a better person as one of these ninja. They had no Jedi code to forbid their attachments. No Sith code to command their solitude. They were ordinary people. Even the worst of these assassins and murderers is somehow more rational and stable than the most level headed Sith.

The day that Naruto discovers Chakra is the first time he weeps.

He sits in his forgotten corner and lets the moisture trail down his cheeks. It is beautiful and wondrous and his heart bursts with an envy that is beyond any emotion he had ever felt. His masked shadow observes but does not interfere.

He thinks of Padme and Luke and Leia. He looks at the children in the room with him, happy and free to laugh and live. And he thinks of the children he never held. He remembers the son who's arm he cuts away in a graceful sweep. He thinks of the daughter he drugs and tortures in the depths of a galactic abomination. He also relives that fateful moment that his love turns to hate and he squeezes the life out of the one being he would have given up everything for.

Peace is not for Naruto Uzumaki. It is the shadow he cannot grasp. So he torments himself with his memories.

Xxx

Naruto is 5 when he decides to start tailoring.

The matron is confused when this slip of a child politely requests an exact set of cloth and thread and other supplies to start working with. As a ninja, she is not worried about trusting kids with sharp objects. As a survivor of the monster trapped in the guts of this boy, she is reluctant to give him anything that might possibly cause anything an injury.

However, as an individual entrusted with the care of this child by the Hokage, she grants him his request. She wonders what this boy will do with it.

It takes a day for the supplies to arrive.

Naruto starts by measuring.

A long strip of measuring tape is quickly put to use as the boy measures things. He measures the obvious things, like his hands and feet and waist. And he measures other things, like the diameter of his neck and the length of his forehead. It is perhaps, even more confusing than the boys request.

Naruto spends three days on his task. The brown and grey fabrics are efficiently measured and marked, and he requests that the Matron do the cuts his arms are too small to do correctly.

And then he begins to stitch.

For hours, Naruto sits and monotonously puts needle and thread through cloth, making clothes that are familiar but also bizarre. Everyone in the orphanage stops to watch him at various times. There is something fascinating about this boy that no one dares to approach, who sits calmly and carefully makes his stitches.

And then, the product is finally revealed. It is a deceptively simple looking set of clothes. But these are not ordinary clothes. For they are the fashion of robes that Obi Wan wore during the clone wars, when he took off his armour and meditated in the temple. But nobody recognizes it here. And Naruto is rather glad of that fact.

He is breaking his own small promise. He decides that he wants to seek some of the peace that Obi Wan himself found precious little of. It is an attachment, but one he finds himself eager to hold on to. Obi Wan, is perhaps the most and least of his regrets.

Naruto looks like some strange monk now. And he is content to leave it at that. Nobody questions him about his new wardrobe, not even the Matron who provided him the supplies. Yet Naruto breaks his silence to whisper his own answer to that unanswered question.

"He was a good man."

And strangely, she somehow understands this non-answer.

Naruto requests to join Ninja Academy the next day. The Matron tells him she will talk to the Hokage.

Naruto nods and smiles sadly.

She does not ask.

This time, he does not answer.

Xxx

A/N: knocked off a second one. Hope you enjoyed it.

Please review!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: see 1st chapter

Xxx

 _There are many gods among the stars._

 _Some are ancient and some are not._

 _Yet all the gods had one thing in common._

 _They were all mortals once._

 _And perhaps that was why they were flawed._

 _And why their corpses littered the fields, come the war in heaven._

Xxx

The ninja academy will not be the Jedi Temple.

Naruto is not sure what he expects, but this much he can be sure of. It is a good thing, he decides, that he will not be pushed against memories of the past, of his almost forgotten Padawan days, or his far more troublesome time as a Jedi. Mostly however, he hopes that being surrounded by children would not make him relive the last time he was surrounded by children like that. After all, slaughtering them with a lightsaber is not a happy memory.

The orphanage doesn't count of course. He has made his peace with the orphans. He even enjoys their chatter. But the younglings, these academy students, all bright and hopeful and full of dreams…

Naruto lets out a gasp as the memory plays out unwillingly; the young boy he chose to kill when he spoke to him afraid, but with undeserved trust; the girl, a Togurata he left alive but slowly dying, in memory of his former Padawan; that one Wookie child, with the stench of burnt fur in his nostrils, as he tried to stay alive while growling so painfully, so pitifully. He remembers them all, and he hates himself a little more, because he knows he will not forget, because he cannot forget. He would torment himself a thousand times because he deserved it and everything more. For his angel that he had hurt and killed he would suffer gladly in silence.

If anyone noticed the young boy who sat in the hallway, shivering to an unknown coldness as he looked at things only he could see, they did not mention or gossip about it.

Xxx

Naruto sits in his assigned classroom with a slight hint of wonder. This is not the Jedi temple, he reminds himself. These are not younglings, and the teacher is no Jedi. There is no enforced calm and quiet. There is just raw chaos, pure and innocent, as anathema to the Sith as it was to the Jedi themselves.

For a second he allows himself to dream of a life without the force or slavery, of being born in a normal family, with his mother (never a father), going to school like all the other children, making friends and having little adventures. It shatters in his mind gleefully. But it is only replaced by a vision of his children attending a normal Naboo school, sitting in their classes, bored but attentive while Padme and he watch on proudly.

It too disappears, like the morning mist chased away by the dawning sun.

Yet even that terrible longing cannot stop him from feeling the joy of this. For once in both lives, Naruto was truly normal. Clan kids, normal kids, orphans and everyone in between, they all sat in the same room, taught by the same stern looking teacher. It was magical.

Xxx

It is a sad fact of life that children, wherever they exist, shall be irredeemable little rascals when put in a classroom. Naruto is vaguely discomforted at the behaviour of the children around him. It is neither the hopeless existence of slaves he grew up with, nor the restrained enthusiasm of the younglings of the Jedi Temple. It is, he reflects, extremely disorienting.

Naruto sits in the very back of the class, an island of calm in an ocean of chaos. He is not a child, and he has no intention of being drawn into the childish social politics that had made his early days in the Temple a source of great discomfort to him. He does not crave their company, and he is loath to initiate contact with them. He reminisces on the past instead, of night time trysts in a moonlit Coruscanti Apartment, of small interludes of love and passion amidst the birthing pains of an empire. He thinks about quiet peaceful moments, of curling up on a couch and feeling the kicks within Padmes belly.

He dreams of a life that was and could have been and smiles bitterly.

Xxx

The first day of class is a very simple affair. There are introductions and courses and other important things plainly spoken of, to civilians who do not understand, and clan children who think that they do. Ninja are "cool" and no amount of warnings will sway the naïve and ignorant from this path. The teachers speak of service and glory, of power and pain, and most of all, of life and death. They laugh off the solemn teachers in their excitement. They dream of pulling off ninjutsu, of being master swordsmen, of rescuing princesses and defeating bandits.

They do not see the endless fields of carnage. They do not see the rivers of blood and dead bodies that battle leave behind. They do not hear the screams of enemy fighters strafing the world around them as the tides of battle shudder and turn against them. And they do not feel, have not felt the mounting despair as the world turns against you as the endless armies march against you, unstoppable and unkillable. Naruto blinks ad mentally shakes himself. Reminiscing was becoming too much of a habit these days.

Still…

Naruto understands far too much about these than he wishes. He knows that none here will understand either. Children are simply too…lacking in experience. They have not seen life, not yet, and a part of him wishes he could dissuade them from the depths suffering that this path will bring them. But he cannot. He was once a child too. And he had not let anything stop him from being a Jedi. He remembered all too well, how that turned out.

Naruto sighs.

But Naruto does not do anything. He knows just how appealing the life of a warrior is when you are a child. He too had once been given hope and sent to the stars he so often dreamed of. His son, Luke had also gone from outer rim simpleton to the vanquisher of Sith. Power, even with a child's limited understanding of it, is not a path that is denied. In the end, Naruto only reserves his pity for them. It is he decides, best not to think too much about what the future may bring.

Still, Naruto himself is not unaffected. He was a Jedi. He was a Sith. He was born to be an unparalleled weapon of a Force Wielder. Even now, he feels the power, whispering in the back of the head, teasing glimpses of the future that could be, if only he loosed it upon this world. But he has always ignored that voice, and he ignores it now. Yet, there is a part of him that he cannot suppress, the part that once said "I will be the greatest Jedi" and also "I will be the most feared Sith." And now it says "I will be the greatest Ninja"

But Naruto knows it is a trap. It is the same thinking that turned him into a failure of a human being. It led to knighthood, power and Padme. It also led to fear, despair and her death. He did not want to repeat past mistakes. He did not want to know what a war in this world, where men could become gods, would be like. He would not want to lose anyone else, even if he had nobody left to lose.

"Uzumaki, are you alright?"

Naruto blinks. He rubs his face and feels wet tear tracks. Why was he crying?

"Uzumaki?"

Naruto shakes his head.

"I am sorry Sensei. I don't know…I don't know what happened."

The concerned Chunin looks at him sceptically. Naruto suddenly notices everyone looking at him and whispering. He shakes his head slightly. He does not understand them, and he never will.

Xxx

Chunin Hirako knew before he got this class that he was going to be in trouble. There is too much riding on it, and too many important Clan Heirs. He is not happy about it. Unfortunately, saying "no" to the Hokage is never an option, so he didn't do anything but shrug and go on.

But now, he wonders if he should have just said no anyway.

It's the Uzumaki kid of course, that one weird kid in an entire class full of wierd kids. He had studied the classified files for the Bijuu Container and wasn't really sure what to think. How is anyone supposed to deal with this child, he remembers thinking. And now he was experiencing that oddness first hand.

Uzumaki is a quiet child, he admits. In a class full of troublemakers and future rabble rousers, this one is a gem of a student. He is attentive, serious and most of all, _learning_. He cannot remember the last time he saw a kid actually thinking through the warnings and disclaimers the kids get on the first day. Sure, it's a little manipulative to dump everything on their heads even in a simplified way. Four to six year olds simply cannot process the things they mention. They are blinded by Ninja life, and they will remain so until they kill or have somebody die on them.

But Uzumaki? He actually listens and ponders. It is surprisingly creepy to observe. But he continues normally, because this might actuall be a good thing. Hirako briefly falters when Uzumaki smiles in that unusually intense way amidst his introductory lecture.

He actually stops when Naruto starts weeping silently on top of his ridiculously sad smile. It was making him feel teary eyed just watching him. He tries to wake him up, and seems to succeed.

When the kid manages to make things more confusing, he just gives up.

"Get to the medic kid. Get her to check you for any issues. You…are not alright."

When the kid calmly walks out of the room looking morbidly introspective again, he knows that this will not be the end of it. Considering that the average Jinchuuriki is an insane, angry nutjob, having a weepy one is not something he is quite ready to process.

There is something not quite right with that kid.

Thankfully, he just has this one year with this bunch, then he can wash his hands of the "special" kids and just focus on being a normal teacher. He couldn't wait.

Xxx

A/N: simple update, just to start off the ninja business. Bit of vague flashbacks, lots of thinking, and perspective of random npc.

Please Review!


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